Alice tried to quell her tears. She sat up and turned her lamp off. Looked across the dunes to his house. It sat dark and unlit, a shadowy hulk under the star-splashed sky.
When she awoke the next morning to the smell of brewing coffee and the sounds of Candy and Twig in the kitchen, Alice didn’t know where she was, in time or place. She could have been nine. Sixteen. Twenty-seven.
‘Cuppa?’ Candy asked as Alice plodded into the living room, bleary-eyed.
‘Yes, please.’
‘How’d you sleep?’ Twig asked.
‘Dreamlessly.’ Alice yawned. ‘You?’
‘Fine.’ Twig nodded.
‘We felt like schoolgirls on camp. Imagine that at our ages.’ Candy smiled, handing Alice a steaming cup of coffee. She nodded in thanks.
Silence settled over them. Outside, Pip chased her tail in circles.
‘She needs to get out.’ Alice took a sip of her coffee. ‘There’s a track I walk sometimes, from my back fence to the crater wall. It leads to a view I think you’d like.’
With Pip scampering ahead, Alice, Twig and Candy walked through the bush. Occasionally one of them stopped to point out a desert rose, or wedge-tailed eagle gliding overhead. Mostly they walked wordlessly as they followed the trail up the crater wall. When they reached the viewing platform, Twig was wheezing. She sat in the shade to catch her breath.
‘It’s those bloody durries you smoke all day long,’ Candy chided. Twig shooed her away.
Alice passed water around and poured some in a bowl for Pip, who lay panting by Twig. The morning air cooled their skin. They turned to the view of the crater. The desert peas swayed bright red.
‘How spectacular.’ Candy sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many desert peas in one place.’
‘They draw tourists from all over the world.’
‘They’ll flower now right through summer until autumn.’ Twig jutted her chin towards the crater. ‘Where my family’s from, down south, we call them flowers of blood,’ she said quietly. ‘In our stories, they grow where blood has spilled.’
‘You’ve never told me that,’ Candy said. ‘Is that why you always took such care growing them at Thornfield?’
Twig nodded. ‘One of the reasons. They always reminded me of the family I lost. And,’ her voice cracked, ‘the family I found.’
‘Have courage, take heart,’ Candy murmured.
Alice picked up a stick and pointed it at the desert peas. ‘The story here is that this is the impact site of a mother’s heart. She pulled it from her body and threw it from the stars, to be near her baby who fell to its death from the sky.’ Alice snapped the stick in half, picking bits of bark from it. ‘The peas bloom for nine months of the year, in a perfect circle. They say every flower is an earthbound, living piece of her.’ She snapped the stick into smaller and smaller pieces until it was a pile at her feet. ‘My friend Ruby says if the flowers are sick, she and her family get sick.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Twig said.
The three of them sat together quietly.
‘Was she buried or cremated?’ Alice couldn’t look at either of them.
‘Cremated,’ Candy replied. ‘She left instructions in her will to scatter her ashes in the river so she might find her way to the sea.’
Alice shook her head, remembering when she’d dived into the river and dreamed of following it all the way home.
‘Maybe we could head back now, Alice. We have something to give you,’ Candy said. Twig nodded.
‘Sure,’ Alice said. She whistled for Pip and led the way back down the trail towards home.
The sun was hot and high when they got in. Alice filled glasses with cool water and handed them around.
Candy went out to the rental car, returning with a small parcel wrapped in a piece of cloth. Alice instinctively recognised it.
‘Oh, god.’
‘She said in her will that you were to have it.’ Candy rested the parcel in Alice’s hands.
Alice unwound the cloth until the Thornfield Dictionary was laid bare. Memories rushed back to her. The first time she went into the workshop with Candy. Twig teaching her how to cut flowers. June showing Alice how to press them. Oggi, just a boy, looking up from his book and waving to her.
‘It took her the best part of twenty years, but she kept her promise in the end.’ Twig’s voice was gravelly. ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted to know is in there. We didn’t realise, but June spent the last year of her life writing Thornfield’s stories, including your mother and father’s.’
Alice tightened her hold on the book.
‘When you read it,’ Candy said, ‘you’ll learn what was in Ruth Stone’s wilclass="underline" that Thornfield was never to be bequeathed to an undeserving man.’ She paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. ‘Alice, when your father was young, June had a heart attack. Not major, though enough to make her write a will. But she kept it a secret,’ Candy’s voice caught, ‘because she decided to leave Clem out of it. June saw how possessive Clem could be of your mum when they were kids. And sometimes, she saw how aggressive he was with the rest of us. Jealous if he wasn’t the centre of attention. Mean-spirited if he wasn’t in control. Sometimes violent when he lost his temper. When he heard June confiding in Agnes that Thornfield would one day be hers, mine and Twig’s, that she’d made the choice not to leave it to Clem … As he was leaving he vowed never to speak to June, or any of us again. Said that’s all we deserved.’ Her voice broke. ‘That’s why we didn’t know you, until you were nine. We never saw or spoke to your parents again.’
‘So …’ Alice trailed off, as she pieced things together, ‘my parents left because June made a choice she knew would anger my father?’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that. June felt she had good reason to do what she did. She was too wary of Clem’s nature to leave everything she and the women in your family had worked for to him. He could be so volatile.’
‘Yeah,’ Alice retorted. ‘I kind of know that, Candy.’ A headache started to pound in her temples. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that’s why they left?’
‘I couldn’t, Alice. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t betray June. Not after everything she’d done for me. It was her story to tell.’
‘So that just cancelled out your own feelings? June’s fuck-up became yours too?’
‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Twig interjected. ‘That is enough. Take a breather.’
Alice got up and paced the room. Tears slid down Candy’s nose.
‘I think it’s important,’ Twig said slowly, ‘that we don’t get caught in the past.’
‘Caught in the past?’ Alice shrieked. ‘How can I get caught in the past when I don’t even know what that means?’
‘Alice, please,’ Twig reasoned. ‘You need to try to stay calm. We need to talk about what’s at hand.’
‘And what exactly is that?’ Alice shot back.
‘Sit down,’ Twig said firmly. Her face was unreadable. Candy was the same. A sense of foreboding washed the anger clean out of Alice’s body. She looked from Candy to Twig.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What is it? Tell me right now.’
‘Alice, sit down.’
She started to protest but Twig held up her hand. Alice pulled out a chair, and sat.
‘This is a lot for you to take in, and we want to spare you as much as we can.’ Twig pressed her hands together.
‘Just tell me,’ Alice said, clenching her jaw.
‘Okay,’ Twig began.
Candy took a deep breath.
‘Alice,’ Twig said.
‘Just bloody tell me!’
‘Your brother survived the fire, Alice,’ Twig said, sagging in her chair.